Many Chinese OEMs are tired of simply producing "me-too" Android clones of more popular American, Japanese, and South Korean phonemakers' designs. They're finally looking to debut designs with truly revolutionary hardware, and the results are already quite exciting, and arguably a boon to Android.

Some Android phonemakers are looking to differentiate their devices by going ultra-thin.

One example is the Elife S5.5 from China's Gionee. To be fair the name is a bit of a shameless impersonation of Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd.'s (KRX:005935) (KRX:005930) Galaxy series naming (a common ploy among both Chinese and Indian companies). But the 5.5 part actually means something big -- the Elife S5.5 is only 5.5 millimeters thick -- 27.6 percent thinner than Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) iPhone 5S.

The rest of the spec -- 1080 AMOLED 5-inch display, a 2 GB of DRAM, and a Mali-450 MP4 (@ 700 MHz) GPU from ARM Holdings plc (LON:ARM) -- is also impressive. But technically speaking, perhaps the biggest feat is the inclusion of a 2300 mAh battery in the razor-thin package.

Other Chinese OEMs are pushing the boundary in the opposite direction. Why go thin, they argue, when you can offer a really, really huge battery?

Perhaps the highest profile upcoming release in this vein is the Lenovo Group, Ltd.'s (HKG:0992) S860. The spec isn't quite as good (1.3 GHz quad-core MT6582, a 720p screen, 8 MP rear camera, etc.) as the Elife S5.5, ironically, but it does have one key edge. It packs a massive 4,000 mAh pack, a battery that is 177.8 percent higher capacity than the iPhone 5S and 53.8 percent higher than the Galaxy S5.

But Lenovo has some competition as local rival Eton has unveiled a stunning device dubbed the "Thundergod".

The Eton Thundergod packs a bigger battery that allows it to nearly match Lenovo's promises in talk time, while delivering a thinner, more powerful device The Thundergo's battery weighs in at 5,000 mAh -- good enough for 21 hours of 3G/4G talk time or a whopping 46 days (1,100 hours) of standby time. Literally, you can go days without charging this monster.

Where as the S860 is rather "fat" -- 10.3 mm thick -- the Eton Thundergod is only 9.3 mm (about 22.4 percent thicker than the iPhone 5S, but pretty darn impressive, considering the massive battery onboard). And the Eton Thundergod packs a meaner processing punch with its 1.7 GHz octacore MediaTek MT6592 (the same chip as Gionee's Elife S5.5).

There's a Mali-450 MP4 and 2 GB of DRAM onboard, as well. The screen resolution has yet to be announced, but expect it to likely be 1080p.

There's a couple bits of bad news -- first off, of all these devices, only the Lenovo S860 has committed to coming to North America, although it would not be surprising to see the Gionee Elife S5.5 or Eton Thundergod stray out of Asia as well. Second, MediaTek's MT6582/92 chipsets that power all of these devices currently only work with Google Inc.'s (GOOG) Android 4.2, not the latest and greatest Android 4.4 "KitKat".

But it's almost certain that similar phones equipped with more capable chipsets (e.g. the Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) Snapdragon 4xx/6xx/8xx family of multicore SoCs) will land on U.S. shores with similar specs. And that's something big to look forward to.

Android is definitely showing the merits of its flexible approach, an approach that has driven competitors like Apple's Phil Schiller batty. Recent court documents in the Samsung-Apple U.S. legal dispute revealed this week that Mr. Schiller had internally vent frustrations over the iPhone's slowing sales, something he blames on larger screen sizes.

But to be fair to Apple, it's been relatively good at predicting consumer trends and demand. The key problem is that Apple only has two current smartphone models, only one of which is a premium device. As these super-battery and super-thin Androids show, what's really killing Apple is something it can do little about -- Android's diversity. Android phonemakers are willing to throw stuff at the metaphorical wall and see what sticks. Some of these design directions will clearly not resonate with what customers want and fail. But as an overall ecosystem, Android is virtually guaranteed to correctly predict what the market wants, where as Apple has to rely on equal measures of luck and market research.

In other words -- it's a great time to be a prospective Android buyer.

To me if it needs a protective case then whats the use of the thin design? I would like to see some durability tests otherwise the thin design is a waste.

Its great they can make a phone this thin however I personally would rather have it be thicker and indestructible than to have a super thin phone. If I have to put a Nerf football around to keep from breaking that defeats the purpose of the design. A thicker battery would also keep electronics protected if designed correctly. Its one of the reasons why I like my Nokia so much its relatively thin however the thing is like a tank that I don't use a protective case on it. There is no fear of dropping my phone on concrete and it getting nothing more than a scratch. Im sure it can be broken but I toss it on concrete all the time and it doesn't even seem to scratch.

My hands are too big to use thin phones. I have an extended battery on ym phone which makes it nice and think so I can use mine one handed without issue. Thin phones look cool but aren't practical for a lot of people with big hands.

*if* you could somehow cause it to completely discharge in an instant, it would release around 19kJ of energy. Thats approximately a teaspoonful of TNT - respect :)Not quite at a useful level though - thats only 3x10^-12 megatons :(

I use a ZTE vital. It is not a thin phone by today's standards, but I still find it to be too thin. I believe 12-15mm is a more ideal thickness for my size hands. I would love to have a 15mm thick phone with a 10000 mah battery. I would finally be able to play a game for an hour without it killing half my damn battery.

It is hard to imagine such a device coming from a region where the people there pretty much all have very small hands.

I'm very interested in knowing if having such a large portion of space dedicated to the battery affects performance in any way, particularly wifi/cell signal strength and heat tolerance.I'm skeptical of how well this device will perform, but I'll gladly be proven wrong.

"If you can find a PS3 anywhere in North America that's been on shelves for more than five minutes, I'll give you 1,200 bucks for it." -- SCEA President Jack Tretton